Web Design is an Important Factor in Your Digital Marketing Plan

An article in Ironpaper reports 57.7% of small and medium business intend to invest in improved websites. That should tell you how important a website should be to your digital marketing strategy. Your marketing campaign both online and offline is intended to bring customers to your website. And your web design is the first point of contact for your customers.

Often times, we find that an extraordinary marketing campaign does not always convert to sales. The most popular reason for this let down could be your website’s landing page. A great web design comprises of myriad variables such as SEO, conversion rate optimization, graphics, layout, and content. If your site is lacking in any of the abovementioned factors, then it is time you sit down with your web designer and seriously consider a website makeover. However, all too often a website makeover is known to worsen the situation because the design did not consider each of the aspects mentioned below.

1. Target Audience: The first step is to identify your target audience and build a site around your ideal audience persona. You could be aiming at customers themselves, new leads, media, or employees. Knowing who your audience helps to build a case for each segment and a journey around them. Before you change the entire web design, run a test design on the existing website by creating new landing pages for your marketing campaign. Your webpage should be aligned with your brand image and must include all important messages that your target audience would expect through any other marketing medium.

The objectives of your marketing campaign are core to any website redesign. These might be anything from increasing sales, lead generation to promoting brand awareness. You must always question your web designer on how the new design will address these objectives. Tracking becomes helpful if you set measurable KPI’s for each objective.

2. Search engine optimization: It is imperative that your site shows up on search because 93% of online activity starts from a simple ‘search.’ SEO is all about improving the chances of your online visibility on search engines organically. A recent study also concludes that 60% of searches come from a mobile device. Therefore, it is a no-brainer that your website has to be responsive to mobile devices.

Apart from responsiveness, other factors that can hinder SEO are content, navigation and technical areas of the site. When the structure and navigation are easy, it is not only easy for users, but also for search engine bots to chalk out a map of your website when they are crawling your site. Another important aspect to consider is to key in custom metadata and alt tags. These give a clearer explanation of pages and content. Also, metadata and alt tags are the first thing a user will see in the search engine result pages before determining whether or not to click on the link. Again, this gives the bots more information about your webpage when they are crawling the site.

Content is important not only for marketing but also for indexing on search engines. Every time you create new content, you have more pages indexed on search engines; which proportionately increase the chances of your site being visible on search engines. Also, your website will get crawled by search engines more frequently as it is always transient.

3. Conversion rate optimization: What use is it for you if a customer visits your site and not complete the purchase? Ultimately, the outcome of any marketing campaign is to increase the conversion rate. However, a conversion need not always be a product purchase. For instance, it can be account creation or a booking completion. Your site must drive users to such call to actions. You must consider including this in your brief to the web designer. A fluid design with appropriate CTA buttons which are easy to identify is the key.

4. User Experience: Your website has to be simple and appealing, without requiring too much effort on the users part to decipher what it is about or trying to navigate. User Experience (UX) is very closely related to SEO and CRO. Therefore, it’s an essential element of web design.

Prioritizing looks over functionality is unhealthy because the users might find the look of a site appealing, but if it takes too much time to load, there are high chances that they might not return.

A good website is a lot more than just a brand identity; it should help you bring in qualified leads. If your website is not performing as well as you’d like it to, then give us, Results Driven Marketing, a call at 215-393-8700 and let us set things right.